Nov 4, 2011

8.2. James LaCroix Jr.: 3 poems


Okey Dokey, Zombie

A zombie rises,
vomits on the lawn at dawn.
An appetite for life,
but can’t keep it down.

A cigarette and an Okey Dokey.

“Are you okay, baby?”
“Okey dokey, baby.”

A creeping, grieving march to nowhere,
A clawing at the perpetual horizon,
A beehive embedded in the ribcage,
A slashed tire for a maw
A drive to work and a sad song,
Another cigarette and a sad song,
A silent world and a ragged pillow.

An empty wait to lie back in the grave,
where his dreams can have at him.


A zombie rises at dawn.
Buries his honey heart,
In his wrinkled suit,
And passes through a perfume cloud.
Some mouthwash and an Okey Dokey.

“Are you okay, baby?”
“Okey dokey, baby.”

A long, drawn out, overdone poem,
A symphony of strings,
A love; a loss,
A spinet broken to bits,
An absence of divinity,
A drive to work and a sad song,
Another cigarette and a sad song,
A world suddenly silenced,
by Yama’s spinning lasso.

Okey Dokey, Zombie,
The wheels of life will turn again.



The Cream That Covers Yr Bones
(for Michelle Demery)

When you came into this world,
I could have held you
in the palm of my hand,
but you would grow
to be a macrocosm
of a woman.
The Birth of Venus
Botticelli’s dream
A Renaissance beauty
Only a master from that era
could capture yr essence and
lay the celestial cream
that covers yr bones
to canvas.

My fingers have traveled
a million miles across yr back,
to the hidden heavens in yr hair.
Yr eyes sing the song of sirens.
Distant diamond planets.
Libidinous astronaut poet
on a crash course
to Sirenum Scopuli.

Yr essence swells inside me;
balloons out of every pore.
I am suffocating
in my love for you;
in this restless quest for ecstasy;
in this dream of half a century;
under the belt;
over volumes of evidence,
where the darkest hour is done
and the light burns true
where you look to me,
and I,
to you,
and the cream that covers
yr bones
is as sweet as ever.



Photography by Eleanor Leonne Bennett



Where Are Yr Legs Donnie?

A paid day to reflect on the life of a barfly.
I only met you once that I can recall.
Only ten or eleven trips around the sun.
Mediating, without the life experience
to grasp the complicated nature
of stubborn old men.
Who have battled a lifetime
in the landscape of the low.
A thief, a wife beater, and a drunk
A trench coated, mumbling madman
with donut offerings
and a weekly allowance for drink.

Where are your legs Donnie?
Where are yr fucking legs?!
Brother George has come with his giddy parade
to rub yr red nose
in the outcome of gang green;
to offer prophecies
that there shall be no funeral for you
when that time comes.

But now that time has come,
though Big Billy left long ago,
to keep company with the eardrum girl.
No one to sponsor yr marathon of death.
14 siblings and not one at the finish line.
The final stretch was just you,
and the other chewed up noses,
tossing yr whiskey marinated hearts
at the stopwatch.

A silent mill town death.



About:

James LaCroix Jr. is a neo-beat poet, photographer, and clay artist from Lawrence, Massachusetts. James was published in a collection of broadsides by Sore Dove Press entitled, MEAT/BEAT (2005), which featured works by many notable Beat writers and poet laureates. These poems are from his latest collection in progress entitled, Okey Dokey, Zombie. He currently resides in Wallingford, CT.

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